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Ketchup on Okra<\/strong><\/p>\n A quaint southern diner, throwback to the 50s. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0Ralph Monday<\/strong> is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. He had been published widely including The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review<\/em>.\u00a0 He was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs<\/em>. In winter 2014 he will have poems published in Dead Snakes.<\/em> Summer 2014 saw a poem in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems.<\/em> He was featured Poet of the week May, 2014 Poetry Super Highway<\/em>. Forthcoming: Poems in Blood Moon Rising<\/em> and Down in the Dirt Magazine<\/em>. His first book, Empty Houses and American Renditions<\/em> will be published by Hen House Press in Fall 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ketchup on Okra A quaint southern diner, throwback to the 50s. Football and country music star posters dotted the walls. I splashed ketchup on fried okra. You were horrified, couldn\u2019t believe it. No one does things like that you said. Here in mid-December I looked at you, considered the irony between bites […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7336"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7339,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7336\/revisions\/7339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFootball and country music star posters dotted
\nthe walls. I splashed ketchup on fried okra.
\nYou were horrified, couldn\u2019t believe it.
\nNo one does things like that you said.
\nHere in mid-December I looked at you,
\nconsidered the irony between bites of grilled
\ncatfish, its dead white flesh nourishing me.
\nHow strange that we live on the dead.
\nTwo years ago you betrayed me,
\nyour Christmas present.
\nFound trash online, a religion professor
\nthat you flew to using the GPS I bought
\nbecause you were terrified of driving long distance.
\nDid he preach to you of love, convince of Cinderella
\ndreams? What took me a year of patience, consideration,
\ntook mere days with him. He must have been Prince
\nCharming, for you opened your legs to him on
\nmeeting for the second time. Had the gall to email
\nme later that the whole time he was fucking you
\nall you could think about was me: you were in
\nthe back of my mind. How sweet. The front of you
\nwas moving back and forth under him, the back of
\nyou thinking of me, special.
\nHow he must have preached imagery from Solomon\u2019s
\nsong before impaling you with his crucifix, how his
\nsermon seared your carnal soul.
\nYou knew me, not him, where I had treated you with
\nkindness, care, you were just the latest online plaything,
\nfor aliens like him do not love girls like you.
\nDiscarded like a broken, ugly toy, you returned to me,
\ncontrite, pulled the fool from the Tarot, and though I
\nknew you were a dark angel I embraced the horror.
\nNow, in this diner, splashing ketchup on okra,
\nI see in your eyes my reflection.
\nThis is the meal that I have paid to eat.<\/p>\n